Blackbird : A Book of Poems on the World and Work of Franz Kafka

In this, his seventh poetry collection, Emery George pays homage to one of the storytellers who has most urgently addressed our age.

Arranged in three parts, the poems celebrate Prague ("Oh City, City!"), Kafka and his circle ("Frantiek"), and selected stories ("Tales of the Frightened Imagination").

The Prague of Kafka's day was one of Europe's most beautiful cities.

For Kafka it was a place to try to escape from. He felt claustrophobic there, and yearned for the open spaces of travel.

He seems to have felt that the ancient and ornate buildings were like people: forbidding, staring, incommunicado.